


The Keeping of Secrets

by Traykor



Category: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:51:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traykor/pseuds/Traykor
Summary: The Rat is keeping more secrets than most people know.





	The Keeping of Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katherine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/gifts).



Jem Ratcliffe knew secrets very well indeed, and long before Marco Loristan entered a broken corner of London inhabited by all accounts and to all views by nothing more than a ragtag band of unwanted waifs, and changed everything the Rat had ever known. Before Marco and his father (the King, of all things, and it would be years, years Rat knew, before that was a secret one got over) decided to take a chance, the most risky of chances, and rest a world of responsibility on small, crippled shoulders and trust them to hold. Who trusted that a sharp mind was worth more than a worthless body, a wretched body that never did what it was told and made everything just so much harder than it needed to be.  
So Marco knew secrets well as well, perhaps even better than the Rat did, but he knew them differently.  
For Marco, secrets were honorable. Secrets had been kept for valor, and honor, and patriotism. Secrets were kept for a good and justifiable reason that anyone would find not dishonor in. For the secrets they kept, Marco and his father were noble, and loved, and honored.  
For the Rat secrets were just life, and how one stayed alive and no one, no one ever could know all the deepest secret the Rat had kept for as long as memory would hold. Secrets that were dark things, evil things, unnatural things. Dirty secrets.  
Why a man drinks himself to death. Why an educated master leaves a school in disgrace.  
Why a mother is dead.  
How there is money for liquor or rent or food when there is only a drunk and a cripple to make money.  
The Rat had suggested only the cleanest ideas to Marco when things were dire--papers and begging, but knew well there were other, darker ways to scrap money together, though thankfully it was mostly father who had tried them. There had been moments though, before Marco, when things had been darkest, that Rat had considered several such options for survival, and had picked the occasional pocket, and slipped the odd loaf of bread from the corner of a display. Hunger drove out honor eventually. Not that Rat intended to ever admit as much to Marco.  
But there was one secret.  
One secret above them all.  
The one secret that Jem Ratcliffe guarded the most, kept the most buried, deep down and locked away and never thought about--because if it was thought about, one might act differently, one might give something away--but always was there, in the back of one’s mind.  
Always.  
Always.  
Which is why Jem stood now staring at a cloth spotted with blood and cursing such a foolish lapse in thought and care. What in the world was one going to do now? It was one thing to keep the true nature of this body, and what shape it had taken upon birth, a secret when all that needed to be done was to ensure no one saw one completely naked. It was another to hide blood when one wasn’t the one that cleaned the clothes any longer.  
Jem wasn’t a fool, and had made sure to obtain an anatomy book, lacking anyone to ask--for asking would have meant trusting someone with the secret above all secrets (the one thing father had properly provided was the ability to read, and read well). Jem had found an anatomy book and painstakingly deciphered the medical terminology and knew that there was to be a cycle of blood once a month, but that it often wouldn’t happen if food was little enough and a body thin enough. Jem had been counting on that--there was never enough food to go around, so to stay underfed yet active enough to stave off the bloods seemed a mindless thing, something that would stay the status quo forever and ever.  
Or at least long enough for one to grow up and find one’s own way in the world.  
That had been the plan. Jem wasn’t sure what sort of life it was that would await as an adult--there was never time to think too much that far ahead, when tomorrow was enough of a worry, but a woman’s lot wasn’t ever what Jem pictured.  
It was father who had started it, when Jem was near 6.  
“You’re clever, Jem,” he’d said during the early years, when he wasn’t drunk nearly as often, “you’re clever, but your body’s weak and broken. You won’t do as a girl. You’ll never get a husband, and there’s little work for one such as you, not fit for a maid. Best to be a boy. A crippled boy can beg alone, or sell papers, or get pity’s work for errands. Or even learn a trade in time, you’re clever enough for it. But you’ll get nowhere as a girl.”  
It was with that that Jenny became Jem, and then the Rat, and the two moved lodgings and Mr. Ratcliffe introduced his son.  
But then came Marco, and with Marco came Stefan and Lazarus, and The Game and Samavia.  
The food was rather better in a palace, and the companion to the Prince was given rather more of it that ever before.  
It was a hard thing to turn down food, to try and not eat too much, when Marco and the King Himself would implore one so to eat one’s fill.  
So here it was, six months later, and enough food had finally convinced Jem’s body that privation was no long the rule of the day, and thus a little could be spared to start certain processes up.  
Jem wasn’t sure whether to cry or laugh that such a small taste of a better life might undo years of careful hiding. Blood will out after all, just not how anyone might have thought.  
There was nothing for it. Courage, courage and cleverness had gotten Jen this far, and the trust of those two people in particular was worth more than all the embarrassment in the world.  
Jem took several long moments to collect said courage, and think what to say (and how to maintain presentability while doing so). Then stood, cleaned and dressed as well as possible, and went to knock on the door of an imposing office down the hall.  
“Come in”  
Jem entered quietly and came to attention before the large desk, arms straight in the crutches standing in for legs. The king, not one to miss even the tiniest of details, noticed the formality and set down his pen, as did Marco, who had been writing beside him (even though months had passed with Jem and Prince Ivor in public, they still tended towards Marco and Rat when alone, and Jem could never think of Marco as anything else).  
“Is everything alright, Rat?” asked Marco.  
Jem took a deep breath and answered.  
“That depends. I have a confession to make, your majesty. I. well. I don’t think it can be hidden any longer. I’ve perhaps hidden it rather longer than I should have done, all things considered.”  
At this Jem stopped. The words wouldn’t come. The words hadn’t been spoken aloud, or even thought of fully in such a long time.  
“I..” am a girl? It rang false in Jem’s mind. Somehow.  
Jem stood frozen before the only two people in the world who mattered and could not speak. 

The king, however, was as usual a great deal more perceptive than even those who knew him best expected.  
“I had wondered, then, if you were ever going to bring that up.” He rose from behind his desk and went to sit on the front of it, drawing Jem in with two strong hands on the aide’s shoulders.  
“It’s alright, you know. Nothing revealed here could change what you are to us--the dearest friend, the bearer, the inventor of the game. Nothing.”  
Jem looked to the floor, and still found the words would not come. Marco just looked confused.  
“Would you like me to say it?” He asked, and the child nodded.  
“If you think you know what it is sir.” Jem whispered, not quite believing it could be that simple. That the King might know already, or have guessed.  
“Father, what is going on?” ask Marco, “is something wrong with him?”  
Stefan laughed.  
“Well, quite a bit perhaps, depending on how you look at it. I rather think our Rat has come to admit that he’s not a him. Or at least wasn’t born that way.”  
Jem looked up sharply, as Marco gasped. He, it seemed, had not guessed.  
“You did know.”  
“Not at first. Not for a long while. You are rather complete in your seeming. I suspected just before you left to bear the sign, but dared not say. I was putting Marco’s life into your hands. And then, I thought, what does it matter? You have earned your place, you will tell or not as it suits you.”  
Stefan gently took the child’s face in his hands.  
“I told you before. You are ours. You belong here, at our side, and we will not be parted from you. Stay a boy if you like, and we will never speak otherwise. Any needs you have that arise from it can be dealt with discreetly. Or tell me you are a girl, and we will make it so. You will keep your place--though you may have to contend with the courts assuming you might do for a bride.”  
At that both Marco and Jem turned scarlet, and Stefan laughed at them.  
“Or decide you shall be a girl in private and a boy to the world. It is up to you. I can give you this choice, let me do so.”  
“Does it really not matter to you?” Jem addressed the king, but was gazing at Marco, so it was Marco who answered.  
“I can’t say it won’t take some getting used to, if you decide to start wearing dresses. But you are our Rat, and as father said, you always will be. No matter what.”  
Jem leaned into those strong hands, towards the two who were light and life and all other good things.  
“Can I think about? I’ve not had the choice, before. To think who I am, truely.”  
“Of course,” the king replied. “Let us know what you decide. We’ll carry on as we have been until you tell us differently.”  
Stefan returned to his chair, and pointed Jem to the little desk beside Marco’s own.  
“Now, there’s work to be doing.”  
Jem sat, and breathed freer than ever before, and picked up the first letter upon the desk.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to reflect Jem's own internal fraught and confused relationship with his/her gender, while leaving it open to interpretation if Jem is presenting as a boy still solely due to external pressure, or is trans or gender fluid. In the end, Jem is a young teen who hasn't had the opportunity to figure it out before, but will now. Up to you which way you think the kid will go after this!


End file.
